Will Scott Walker’s Midwestern Values Fit GOP Convention Need?

The odds are stacked against Governor Scott Walker being able to achieve what the wild rumors suggested on Wednesday.  But after the past year does any one among my readers think that there exists any scenario that is no longer possible from the Republican Party?

Today Walker just shook his head and simply dismissed that he is at all considering, or would even seem to accept the Republican nomination, should the bombastic and unhinged Donald Trump continue to undermine the Republican Party.

With the national GOP convention set for July there is more than ample time for Trump to simply implode.  The past two weeks may have been among the worst his campaign has delivered to the nation.  Degrading a Republican governor of Hispanic descent and challenging the capability and judicial objectivity of a judge based on ethnicity makes the rumor mill surrounding a political coup in Cleveland all the more credible.

And that is where Scott Walker enters the picture.

Walker may be many things that liberals such as myself find politically unappealing.  But no one can say he does not have solid Mid-western values with a most welcoming set of old-fashioned manners.  I readily admit he is a nice man.  Following the steady stream of rude, demeaning, and politically bizarre statements from Trump makes Walker looks downright refreshing.  We have to admit that to be true.

Walker was matter of fact and low-key when he told reporters today that he is grounded here in Wisconsin.  Sure we have heard that before and there is no reason to take him at his word, but given how Trump would have used such a question to inflate himself did it not seem nice to have Walker act with a dose of humility?

I am completely committed to being governor.  If I run another campaign in the future, it’ll be running for re-election for governor in 2018, and I won’t make a decision on that until after the elections and after the budget. But that would be the only campaign I’d consider in the future.

Who knows what happens on the convention floor.  The more political theater that develops from the GOP civil war the better show it will be for politicos such as myself.     But for now Walker takes the rumors in stride and shows how different he is from Trump by being low-key and even-keeled.

Which is exactly the type of possible candidate and nominee the GOP may be seeking out following the disaster they now have center stage.  

Madison Alder Mike Verveer’s Mother Makes Front Page Of The New York Times

Just interesting.  Read the story this afternoon and saw the quote from Madison Alderman Mike Verveer’s mother about Hillary Clinton.  The quote starts on the front page with the story above the fold.  Rather cool.  The picture was not included with the newspaper story but I suspect many want to know where Verveer got his good looks from–hence this image.

If there was a single moment that captured what would carry Hillary Clinton to the 2016 Democratic nomination, it came not during her sun-splashed campaign kickoff in New York last June, or in any of her speeches celebrating hard-fought primary victories over Senator Bernie Sanders.

No, it was the unscripted instant in which a blasé Mrs. Clinton coolly brushed from her shoulder a speck of lint, dirt — or perhaps nothing at all — as a Republican-led House panel subjected her to more than eight hours of questioning in October over her handling of the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

She may not be the orator President Obama is, or the retail politician her husband was. But Mrs. Clinton’s steely fortitude in this campaign has plainly inspired older women, black voters and many others who see in her perseverance a kind of mirror to their own struggles. And Mrs. Clinton’s very durability — her tenacity, grit and capacity for enduring and overcoming adversity — could be exactly what is required to defeat Donald J. Trump.

As a politician’s wife, first lady, senator and secretary of state — and as a two-time candidate for president — Mrs. Clinton, 68, has redefined the role of women in American politics each time she has reinvented herself. She has transfixed the nation again and again, as often in searing episodes of scandal or setback as in triumph.

“She came on the public stage as someone who was a little different,” said Ann Lewis, a longtime adviser. “She attracted fascination, devotion and attacks — and the partisan attacks haven’t stopped.”  “Even as first lady, it was ‘Who does she think she is?’” said Melanne Verveer, a close friend of Mrs. Clinton’s who was her White House chief of staff.

Just very cool to see this.

History On Front Pages Of Newspapers: Hillary Clinton Claims Democratic Nomination

As with most major news events I gather up some front pages of newspapers and share the first draft of history.  The victory of Hillary Clinton as our nation’s first female presidential nominee is a moment we all can relish.  What a grand time in America!   And once again Democrats made it happen.  I am glad to have stood on the right side of history this campaign season.

 

GOP Locked Out Of U.S. Senate Race In Most Populous State

For the record I am not in favor–and never have been–of this type of primary where the top two vote-getters advance to the general election.    But those are the rules in some states, including California.  I truly think that competing ideas from parties vs. candidates is what general elections should be about.

This morning one thing is most clear in California..  There will be a Democratic winner for their U.S. Senate seat in November–and it will be a woman.

I  strongly favored Kamala Harris, the state’s attorney general, and she did a grand job.  As of this posting she was leading with 40% with most precincts counted.

Loretta Sanchez, a House member from Orange County, finished second  so that sets up a Democrat-versus-Democrat general election clash for retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat.

The primary results guarantee that  the seat will stay in the hands of a Democratic woman. Sanchez is vying to be the first Latina senator, while Harris would be just the second African-American woman elected to the Senate.  We can all be proud regardless of the outcome.

Meanwhile the leading Republican contender, Duf Sundheim, had 9 percent of the vote.  The problem was the GOP is so troubled in that state they could not coalesce behind one candidate.  Eleven other Republicans split thousands of votes among them, locking their party out of the Senate race in the nation’s most populous state.

Republican egos on full display!